Going to great lengths…

Going to great lengths…

The latest addition to the restaurant offering in Stranmillis is Latitude, an easy-going bistro with plenty of international flair. Co-owner, Akhil Tandon, has been talking to LCN.

Indian-born Akhil Tandon (35), is the driving force behind the latest restaurant offering in Belfast’s fashionable Stranmillis district.

Latitude is situated in premises formerly occupied by the popular Indian restaurant, Lolita, but the food and ambience on offer now have a more diverse, international appeal.

Akhil, who studied hotel management in his native India before signing on as a chef with US cruise line, Carnival, describes the new venture as a higher-end English and European bistro:

“That’s where the name, Latitude, comes from,” he told LCN recently. “We really want to introduce people to lots of great world cuisine. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world with my work, just like the lines of latitude on a map, and our menu contains lots of great, eclectic dishes from all over the world too.”

Akhil arrived in Belfast for the first time in 2006 after tiring of the gruelling schedule he followed with Carnival, He took up a job as chef with Jury’s Inn but after six months, he transferred to a new post at Malmaison in the city. A job as sous chef at the Europa hotel followed, as did his marriage to his fiancée, Purnima, who comes originally from Nepal and now runs her own beauty business – Irish Brow Lounge – in Belfast.

After four-and-a-half years at the Europa – in 2011 – Akhil decided that the time was right for him to go into business for himself and he invested in Bradbury Place noodle and burrito bar, Wok-a-Moley. Akhil’s involvement with that business continued for more than three years before the urge to try something different overcame him again:

“I think that owning my own business is something that runs in the family,” remarks Akhil. “My brother has his own building business and my father is also self-employed. I felt that I really wanted to do something on my own and I spotted this opportunity on the Stranmillis Road.”

That was in October last year. Lolita was still trading at that time, but the business was up for sale. Akhil and chef, Amit Rekhi, bought it for “a reasonable price” and spent an additional £10,000 on refurbishing the interior. Everywhere was cleaned and redecorated and the function room upstairs received a total refit.

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That work took around two months to complete and the business was closed during that time, opening again just in time for Christmas.

Since then, says Akhil, the restaurant has been performing “better than expectations”:

“The thinking is that normally, you have to wait for one year to reach a point where people really begin to know you. We’ve only been open for five or six months, but already, I feel that we are at a point where we are pretty well-known across the city,” says Akhil. “I was in hospital recently and I discovered that the nurse who treated me knew of us and the doctor had actually dined here, so that gave me a really good feeling.”

The menus at Latitude are constantly refreshed but it’s hard to miss the international influence, with teriyaki salmon and chicken korma sitting easily alongside pan-seared sea bass and a traditional sirloin steak.

“We keep changing the menus, that’s the key thing,” says Akhil. “We’re in a familiar bistro setting here, but we add lots of international dishes so that our customers can get a real taste for good world cuisine. It seems to go down very well with everyone who visits.”

Akhil knows that defining a unique selling point is almost mandatory in today’s hospitality trade and like many, he pins his hopes on high levels of personalised customer service:

“We treat our customers as if they are our own family,” he says “We take time to speak to all of them and to explain everything to them because we’re a new restaurant. We always try to keep things simple too, because we’re a new restaurant with new ideas.

“We always try to act on the feedback we get aswell.  We’ve been asking everyone if there are things that they think we could do better. We know that people have different tastes and that not everyone is going to like everything that we do, so we work hard to make the changes that people have recommended to us.”

Going forward, the priority Akhil says that the focus on customer service will continue:

“We know that we’re only here because of the support we get and so we’re focused on making sure people leave us content and happy, that’s the prime objective and I think that the service they get here is as good as it is in other venues with much higher prices than ours.”

Two or three years from now, Akhil says that he would love to own two or three similar venues elsewhere in Belfast:

“That’s what the plan is anyway,” he adds. “I would love to be able to expand and that’s what we will work towards, but we really need to focus on what we have in the meantime to make sure that standards are maintained.”

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